'Pride and Prejudice,' story that launched a thousand spinoffs, turns 200 By Bryony Jones, CNN

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London (CNN) -- It's a simple love story: Girl meets guy, it's hate at first sight, and then they fall in love. "Pride and Prejudice," the original rom-com, turns 200 today, with fans around the world celebrating the story that launched a whole industry.

The tale of feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet and her relationship with the haughty, brooding Darcy is the stuff of spinoffs aplenty: Even if you've never read the original, chances are you've seen one of its many remakes, from Bridget Jones to Bollywood, zombie thrillers to murder mysteries.

But Jane Austen's best-known and most-loved novel, first published on January 28, 1813, and viewed by the author as her "own darling child" wasn't an immediate hit.

"It was very well received, and it made money, but it wasn't a massive bestseller in her day," says Louise West, curator of the Jane Austen House Museum at Chawton, in Hampshire.

Instead it became a slow-burn success, turning its creator -- after her early death in 1817 -- into a literary star. In his recent book "What Matters in Jane Austen?" expert John Mullan claims that only Shakespeare and Dickens "can rival her continuing, international appeal."

Cambridge University English professor Janet Todd puts Austen's enduring appeal down to "the mixture of simplicity and complexity -- her work looks so simple, so ordinary, and yet underneath, the more you look, the more you see, and the more complicated it becomes.

"Austen is one of the very few real crossover writers, who are popular with the public and also feted by critics and academia -- it is very rare."

"It's not just any old love story," says West. "It is also brilliantly written. Austen was the first truly modern novelist, and 'Pride and Prejudice' is full of irony, craft, careful plotting -- you read it for the story, but you get all these other layers of richness too."

But she says the secret of the story's success is down to its protagonists, Elizabeth and Darcy, "two terribly attractive characters who spark off each other in a very dynamic and sexy way," and to its heroine, in particular.

"'Pride and Prejudice' is the book that brings more people here than any other," says West. "They come looking for Elizabeth Bennet -- she is the character women aspire to be, she got the fairy story, and they want it to be real."


READ MORE: http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/28/world/europe/pride-and-prejudice-200th-anniversary/